An Introduction of Virtualization in Oracle RAC

To provide best solutions to business issues in any organization has to set up its infrastructure. In the world of technology, business focus on it’s better setup of IT departments. Day by day new technology introduces by the champions of IT. New requirements of clients demand new technology as soon as possible. For providing better services organizations has to become spendthrift. As per business rules expenses must be less as much as possible and income must be high as much as possible. As Oracle provides its a solution for the problem of cost saving on minimum resources with better performance by introducing the concept of Virtualization in RAC. Today we are going to have the introduction of Virtualization in RAC. I wish this information will be valuable for you.

Introduction Of Virtualization:- In simple words, we all are aware of virtualization. It means a full copy of any thing. Due to change in technology, we reach that point where each and every operation of any business either is it on small scale or large scale has to depend on IT departments just because of any fault business must not suffer from loss for a single second. Virtualization refers to the creation of a virtual resource such as a server, desktop, operating system, file, storage or network. The availability of Oracle VM overcomes on the cost issues and performance. The fusion of Oracle VM and Oracle RAC enables a superior server consolidation (Oracle RAC databases with underutilized CPU resources or peaky CPU utilization can often benefit from consolidation with other workloads using server virtualization) sub-capacity licensing and rapid provisioning.In its never-ending quest to run its own business on the VMware platform, VMware IT achieved a major milestone in 2014: The full virtualization of its Oracle Real Application (RAC) databases, running mission- and business-critical applications on a fully virtualized platform for the first time.

The goal of Virtualization:- Oracle VM is the only software-based virtualization solution that is fully certified for Oracle Real Application Clusters on Linux. The main goal of virtualization is to manage workloads by radically transforming traditional computing to make it more scalable. Virtualization has been a part of the IT landscape for decades now, and today it can be applied to a wide range of system layers, including operating system-level virtualization, hardware-level virtualization and server virtualization.Oracle now offers a tremendously available, cloud-ready virtualization panacea for your data center, combining all the benefits of a fully virtualized environment.

This type of virtualization provides best isolation and security for Virtual machine.

Truly isolated multiple guest OS can run simultaneously on the same hardware.

It’s the only option that requires no hardware assist or OSassist to virtualize sensitive and privileged instructions.

Limitations:

Full virtualization is usually bit slower, because of all emulation.

Hypervisor contain the device driver and it might be difficult for new device drivers to be installed by users.

Para virtualization:

Unlike full virtualization, guest servers are aware of one another.

The hypervisor does not need large amounts of processing power to manage guest os.

The entire system work as a cohesive unit.

Advantages:

As a guest os can directly communicate with hypervisor

This is efficient virtualization.

Allow users to make use of new or modified device drivers.

Limitations:

Para virtualization requires the guest os to be modified in order to interact with para virtualization interfaces.

It requires significant support and maintainability issues in production environment.

Advantages of Virtualization

Reduced spending. Purchasing multiple servers is often a good chunk of this cost. Virtualizing requires fewer servers and extends the lifespan of existing hardware. This also means reduced energy costs.

Easier backup and disaster recovery. In seconds, leaks, floods, power outages, cyber-attacks, theft and even snow storms can wipe out data essential to your business. Virtualization makes recovery much swifter and accurate, with less manpower and a fraction of the equipment – it’s all virtual.

Better business continuity. With an increasingly mobile workforce, having good business continuity is essential. Without it, files become inaccessible, work goes undone, processes are slowed and employees are less productive. Virtualization gives employees access to software, files and communications anywhere they are and can enable multiple people to access the same information for more continuity.

More efficient IT operations. Virtualization provides an easier route for technicians to install and maintain software, distribute updates and maintain a more secure network. They can do this with less downtime, fewer outages, quicker recovery and instant backup as compared to a non-virtual environment.

Less heat builds up Millions of dollars have gone into the research and design of heat dissipation and control in the data center. But the cold, hard fact is, all of those servers generate heat. The only way around that? Use fewer servers. How do you manage that? Virtualization. Virtualize your servers and you’re using less physical hardware. Use less physical hardware and you generate less heat. Generate less heat in your data center and a host of issues go away.

Greener pastures If you’re not doing your part to help clean up the environment, you’re endangering the future. Reducing your carbon footprint not only helps to clean up the air we breathe, it also helps to clean up your company image. Consumers want to see companies reducing their output of pollution and taking responsibility. Virtualizing your data center will go a long way toward improving your relationship with the planet and with the consumer. Better testing

Better testing What better testing environment is there than a virtual one? If you make a tragic mistake, all is not lost. Just revert to a previous snapshot and you can move forward as if the mistake didn’t even happen. You can also isolate these testing environments from end users while still keeping them online. When you’ve perfected your work, deploy it as live.

No vendor lock-in One of the nice things about virtualization is the abstraction between software and hardware. This means you don’t have to be tied down to one particular vendor — the virtual machines don’t really care what hardware they run on, so you’re not tied down to a single vendor, type of server (within reason of course), or even platform better disaster recovery

Better disaster recovery Disaster recovery is quite a bit easier when your data center is virtualized. With up-to-date snapshots of your virtual machines, you can quickly get back up and run. And should disaster strike the data center itself, you can always move those virtual machines elsewhere (so long as you can re-create the network addressing scheme and such). Having that level of flexibility means your disaster recovery plan will be easier to enact and will have a much higher success rate.

Single-minded servers Not only are you looking at a single point of failure, you have services competing with resources as well as with each other. Those all-in-ones are purchased to save money. With virtualization, you can easily have a cost-effective route to separating your email server, your web server, your database server, etc. By doing this, you will enjoy a much more robust and reliable data center

Easier migration to cloud With a move to virtual machines, you are that much closer to enjoying a full-blown cloud environment. You may even reach the point where you can deploy VMs to and from your data center to create a powerful cloud-based infrastructure. But beyond the actual virtual machines, that virtualized technology gets you closer to a cloud-based mindset, making the migration all the more easy.

Disadvantages of Virtualization

Upfront costs. The investment in the virtualization software, and possibly additional hardware might be required to make the virtualization possible. This depends on your existing network. Many businesses have sufficient capacity to accommodate the virtualization without requiring a lot of cash. This obstacle can also be more readily navigated by working with a Managed IT Services Provider, who can offset this cost with monthly leasing or purchase plans.

Software licensing considerations. This is becoming less of a problem as more software vendors adapt to the increased adoption of virtualization, but it is important to check with your vendors to clearly understand how they view software to use in a virtualized environment to a

Possible learning curve. Implementing and managing a virtualized environment will require IT staff with expertise in virtualization. On the user side, a typical virtual environment will operate similarly to the non-virtual environment. There are some applications that do not adapt well to the virtualized environment – this is something that your IT staff will need to be aware of and address prior to converting.